St. Barth is an island in the caribbean, and one of my favorite places in the world. My favorite part of going there is that you can scuba dive. I have done all 20 of my dives there, and it where I got certified.
Night Dive:
This is going to be my first night dive, I thought to my self. I was sitting there with two friends that I met on the island. They were supposed to go also. “Are you excited for the dive?'” I asked them.
Johnny waited a beat. “We aren’t going. Tureen [the dive instructor] said that since we are not certified, it wouldn’t be safe.”
“That sucks.”
I was wondering why it wouldn’t be safe, so I kept the question in my head to ask Tureen later. My dad and I were going to leave soon.
“Wyatt, let’s go.” My dad was also really excited.
As we walked to the diving center, my dad and I were talking about what we would see. I said Nurse Sharks, and he said Sting Rays. We were both right.
We got our wetsuits, and brought out tanks onto the boat. Before we started moving, Tureen gave an overview of the dive. He opened by saying that he only allows certified divers could be on night dives. Because it is so dark, you can’t have people who cannot clean their mask, find their regulator if it falls out and you cannot have people who cannot control their buoyancy.
Since I was the only kid there, I earned some spectacle looks. People probably didn’t think that I am certified. After Tureen’s overview, his two assistants handed out flashlights to everybody. We all opened our tanks and got ready to go down. I sat on the side of the boat and did my fallback entry. I was the third person in the water. My BC vest was inflated, so I was floating on the surface waiting for the other divers to enter the warm caribbean water.
Everybody was in. We all gave to ‘ok’ sign and went under, deflating our vests. We were under for 58 minutes, and saw a lot. We saw a see turtle that was easily 4’6″, possible even five feet.
It was sleeping.
I loved the night dive, because the ecosystem is almost different, like the animals are on shifts. There were squid and an octopus (which I didn’t take a picture of) and different kinds of lobster.
All of the Sea Urchins came out, more visible than in the day.
The fish have to go somewhere, right? So when they sleep, some fish make a bubble of mucus around them to mask their sent from predators.
There are also Lion Fish, an invasive species to the area, and a lot of other places in the world. One dive a few months ago, Tureen brought me on a shark dive. Whenever he saw a Lion Fish, he would take his spear gun, shoot them and then feed them to the sharks.